Re: Poor Programming when Windows cannot be resized?

Going back and redoing an application would be a fair amount of work. This
is really the sort of thing they should of thought about while they were
building the application. I'd certainly write to them asking for a DPI
aware version. Some computers are shipping at 120 DPI by default nowadays.

You could try the new DPI scaling to force Windows to take the 96 DPI app,
and resize it to 120 DPI. However that will result in the application
looking blurry. (It's the same technique as resizing an image, only Windows
will do it on the fly).

You can enable that by going to DPI settings, and clicking Custom DPI down
the bottom, on the next page there is a check box for 'Use Windows XP style
scaling'. If you uncheck that Windows will scale applications that aren't
DPI aware automatically (at the cost of making them blurry), regardless of
that, applications should be DPI aware.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

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"Alfred Kaufmann" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I am running Vista SP1 and I bought a large LCD display so that I am
> able to personalize the display to make the text more readable by
> scale the font to 120dpi from the standard 96 dpi. Everything works
> great with all my applications until I installed Simply Accounting;
> this program opens some windows that do not have scroll bars or the
> gadgets to resize the window. This makes it impossible to view
> information that you may need to see or select. I called their
> support and they suggested I scale the font back to the 96dpi standard
> and this does work, their windows then display all the information but
> this affects my entire system and every application now has tiny hard
> to see fonts, ridiculous.
>
> I want to send Simply Accounting a letter telling that they are using
> poor programming practises because every window the program opens
> should have the standard gadgets to resize the window and to scroll if
> required to view the whole window. I don't think it would be hard for
> a competent programmer to go through the code, make the corrections
> and re-compile this application. Am I right in with this opinion?
>
> Al
>

Alfred Kaufmann <> wrote in
news::

> On Tue, 7 Oct 2008 17:31:27 +0100, "Paul Smith"
> <> wrote:
>
>>Going back and redoing an application would be a fair amount of work.
>>This is really the sort of thing they should of thought about while
>>they were building the application. I'd certainly write to them
>>asking for a DPI aware version. Some computers are shipping at 120
>>DPI by default nowadays.
>
> I will write them, their windows should consistent.
>
>>
>>You could try the new DPI scaling to force Windows to take the 96 DPI
>>app, and resize it to 120 DPI. However that will result in the
>>application looking blurry. (It's the same technique as resizing an
>>image, only Windows will do it on the fly).
>>
>>You can enable that by going to DPI settings, and clicking Custom DPI
>>down the bottom, on the next page there is a check box for 'Use
>>Windows XP style scaling'. If you uncheck that Windows will scale
>>applications that aren't DPI aware automatically (at the cost of
>>making them blurry), regardless of that, applications should be DPI
>>aware.
>
> I just tested that, set to 120dpi and unchecked the 'Use Windows XP
> style scaling' and it made no difference. I am using Vista Home
> Premium 64Bit SP1. I know that some programs have problems dealing
> with the 64 bit operating system.
>
> Al
>

You never did say if the program has a 'Fonts' section in the options.

Instead of changing the overall DPI of the system, I'd tend to increase
the font sizes in the apps themselves, then there's never a problem with
DPI.

I'd also do the same thing with the Windows elements themselves...go into
the display properties -> 'Appearance' (or whatever it's called now) ->
'Advanced', and increase the icons a few ticks, the icon font (which is
the desktop icons font and what is seen in Explorer, the menu font,
msgbox font, titlebar & titlebar font (if you wanted that too) and you'd
be all set. Then increase the font size in your apps.

But that's me.